British Land suffers 0.4% drop in its retail assets’ value
British Land, one of the biggest property developers in the UK, has suffered a slight decline in the value of its retail assets.
British Land, which is the second-largest real estate investment trust by market value in the country, said the value of its portfolio of shopping centres and warehouses dropped 0.4 per cent in the final quarter of last year.
The drop was led by a 0.6 per cent fall in the property developer’s £2.7 billion retail warehouse portfolio.
British Land’s retail assets account for nearly 61 per cent of its total £10.28 billion property portfolio.
Rank’s half-year pre-tax profit jumps to £32.5M
Rank, the owner of Grosvenor Casinos and Mecca Bingo, enjoyed an 8 per cent increase in its half-year pretax profit, thanks to an unprecedented rise in the number of customers.
The British gaming group said its adjusted pre-tax profit jumped to 32.5 million pounds in the six months to December 31 last year, while total revenue jumped 3 per cent to settle at 295.9 million pounds.
Grosvenor Casinos accounted for 125.8 million pounds in revenue, while Mecca Bingo generated revenue of 117.4 million pounds.
Google reportedly preparing to launch ‘Google Drive’ cloud storage service
According to a Wednesday evening report from The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), a new cloud storage service is being prepared for launch by Google to offer direct competition to startups Dropbox and SugarSync and other similar services.
As per the WSJ report, citing unnamed sources with knowledge of the proceedings at the internet search biggie, the Google storage locker – dubbed ‘Google Drive’ – will likely be rolled out in the coming “weeks or months.”
Foxconn hacked; passwords and logins posted online
In a Thursday Twitter post, hacking group called SwaggSec claimed that it had hacked Foxconn and had breached its email servers and Intranet, along with posting passwords and login details online.
According to Time magazine, SwaggSec had managed to snag the 16 megabytes of Foxconn files which reportedly contained about 25 spreadsheets as well as a few text documents.
Google developing an ‘entertainment device’
Internet search giant Google is apparently working on venturing more broadly into the consumer electronics arena; with the company stating in a last-week-filed application with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that it would commence the testing of a device which it has simply described as an "entertainment device."
According to tech website GigaOM, which was the first to report about that Google had filed an application with the FCC, the home entertainment device to be tested by Google would seemingly have Bluetooth as well as Wi-Fi connectivity.
BHP Billiton report first profit fall in around 3 years
Lower global prices for iron, copper and coal forced the world's leading miner BHP Billiton to report its first profit fall in around three years.
BHP Billiton on Wednesday said it suffered a fall of 6 per cent in half-year profit. Nevertheless, it pocketed $US9.94 billion as profits in six months through December 2011, more than the $US90 billion commodities trader Glencore and miner Xstrata would together have generated in all of the last year.
O2 to conduct one-day remote working trial
Mobile phone operator O2 will carry out a one-day remote working trial on Wednesday to see how it could avoid any possible disruption during upcoming London Olympic Games.
Under the trial, a total of 2,500 employees at the network provider’s Slough, Berkshire-based headquarters will work from home, cafes and O2 stores.
Ben Dowd, business director at O2, said the Olympic Games would bring operating, travel as well as business challenges.
He added that the trial would help O2 and others companies in planning for contingency plans to meet the potential challenges.
Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock, 3 directors step down
Close on the heels of the resignation of Yahoo's founder Jerry Yang from the company's board, and the January appointment of ex-PayPal/eBay executive Scott Thompson as the CEO, there has been yet another Yahoo board shakeup which has led to the departure of the company's chairman Roy Bostock.
According to reports, Yahoo board chairman Roy Bostock has agreed to set down from his role at the next meeting of the shareholders. Along with Bostock, three more directors - Vyomesh Joshi, Arthur Kern, and Gary Wilson - have also decided to call it quits at the company.
Google releases Chrome app for Android Ice Cream Sandwich
Bringing together its two most successful products - the Android operating system and the Chrome web browser -, Internet search giant Google Tuesday released a Chrome app for its Android `Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS)' mobile OS.
Serving as an alternative to the Android's web browser - which has been rather drably dubbed as `Browser' -, the newly-released Chrome app for Android ICS will essentially bring a horde of features to the Android-based handsets and tablets, from the Chrome's desktop version.
Apple’s iPhone dominated the US, global smartphone markets in Q4: report
Apple's iPhone dominated the US as well as worldwide smartphone markets during the three months to December, a fresh report by NPD and IDC revealed.
Apple sold a record 37 million iPhones during the last quarter of 2011. Released figures show that Apple grabbed 23.5 per cent of the worldwide smartphone market during the three months through December, up from 15.9 per cent in the corresponding period of the previous year.
Microsoft removes a patent from list of claims against Barnes & Noble
Software giant Microsoft yesterday filed a motion the US International Trade Commission (ITC) to remove the so-called "522 patent" from the list of patents that it claims Barnes & Noble's Nook e-readers violates.
The patent withdrew by Microsoft covers the technique of showing tabs, for instance in a browser.
Google’s new “Solve for X” project dedicated to tackling world's biggest problems
Internet search giant’s attempts to design a website which would serve as a communication channel for "moonshot thinking" have taken the form of its newly-unveiled project called "Solve for X" --- a dedicated website aimed at encouraging problem-solving and teamwork for finding “radical” solutions to some of the world’s biggest problems.
Facebook sees developing countries as major growth markets
Facebook, the world’s most popular social networking site that recently filed papers to become a public-listed company, is now seeing developing countries like Brazil and India as major growth markets.
In developed countries like America and Britain, the social networking firm’s user-base has already reached saturation point. But developing countries are still promising huge consumer bases to tap.
European regulatory group asks Google to delay its privacy policy consolidation
In its Thursday letter addressed to Google CEO Larry Page, a European regulatory group - the Article 29 Working Party – has sought the postponement of the Internet search giant’s planned move in the direction of privacy policy consolidation.
Microsoft loses key Windows Phone employee to Amazon
In a development first reported by ZDNet, one of Microsoft’s key Windows Phone employees, Brandon Watson, has quit the software giant to join the online retail biggie Amazon, where he would work on Kindle apps.
Anonymous hackers sneak onto conference call between FBI and foreign law-enforcement agencies
On Friday, computer hacking group Anonymous said in a notably haughty announcement that it had eavesdropped on a conference call – concerning how to tackle the cyber-pirate group - between the FBI, Scotland Yard and other overseas law-enforcement agencies, including those in Ireland, Germany, France, Sweden, and the Netherlands.
RIM introduces recycling/trade up scheme to prevent BlackBerry users from leaving
In what apparently is a move aimed largely at preventing the present users of BlackBerry devices from switching over to other competing platforms, the Canada-based mobile biggie Research in Motion (RIM) has come up with a new recycling/trade up scheme.
The scheme, which RIM has introduced recently, will essentially give the current owners of Blackberry handsets an advantage of £106 when they upgrade to another BlackBerry device. The mentioned amount will be sent to them as a cheque, by post.
Sony warns of a ballooning annual loss of $2.86 billion
In its recent warning of a ballooning full-year loss, Sony said that a weak economy, natural calamities, and a strong yen have apparently taken a toll on the company's earnings, with its annual loss figures likely to touch Y220 billion
(or $2.86 billion).
Citing reasons like the cost of streamlining its losses-ridden TV business, the supply-disrupting Thailand floods, and the surging yen, Sony said that all these factors contributed to the company's products becoming more expensive in overseas markets.
Facebook IPO: Mark Zuckerberg's bizarre ode to hackers
With social networking giant Facebook having filed for initial public offering to the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday, the company's CEO Mark Zuckerberg released somewhat of a quasi-philosophical letter in coincidence with the high-profile event.
Touching upon a number of issues, ranging from the nature of personal relationships to the role that technology can play in political cataclysm, Zuckerberg's letter strangely contained a rather bizarre ode to "the hacker way."
Copyrights: Legal hurdles to retrieving users’ data from Megaupload
The retrieval of Megaupload users' data will apparently not be an easy process because of the fact that the possibility of a clash of interests of the users with those of copyright owners may pose some notable legal hurdles.
Even though a temporary respite has come for Megaupload users in the form of the consent by the two host servers - Carpathia Hosting and Cogent Communications - about avoiding deletion of data for another two weeks, it still will be quite an uphill task to enable the users to actually retrieve the files that they have uploaded on the shuttered file-sharing site.